Youth Development in 2012

[Tk1129]

Since I haven't played a long save in FM2012 I haven't had the chance to bring a player through the youth system to the first team.

I noticed a few new things though.

As long as your players are in your youth team U18, U19 or w.e it happens to be, their training schedule is the youth schedule, even if they're on a full-time contract. I find that to be a step back in terms of developing youngsters. They usually have a ton of attributes that need to be trained quite intensively to make it to the first team and on the youth schedules there's barely any progress at all.

I also have not seen any newgens start with really outstanding attributes. They seem to all start at similar quality and just their potential rating is different. Again - this means it takes a lot longer to introduce them to the first team and their development will be slowed down by the lousy youth training.

Games in the first team seem to help their development a lot quicker than in the past. Against my best judgement I persisted with playing youngsters in my first team for 10-15 games a season and they developed quite quickly. I saw almost a month to month improvement.

My man gripe is that you can't really develop a youngster unless you stick them in the first team and handicap your performance (so it seems).

I also never let players go out on loan in the past, because their progress was always inconsequential due to the loan team having rubbish coaches and facilities, so no matter how many games they played they always returned basically the same as they left and there goes a precious year in my footballer's development.

I haven't tried loaning this year, but if it is the same as previous years, then I just don't see how youngsters can be developed in FM2012. It seems incredibly difficult and time consuming.

P.S. Junior Coaching option on Board Interaction - what does that do? Just able to hire more youth coaches. I really didn't see any difference when my board approved it.

 

[Aannddyy]

I've never brought through a world class player, but I've never been a club with good training/youth facilities. I have however, bought a 17 year old and turned him into one of the best in the game. I think your best best with youth development is to find free youngsters, there are a lot around, and just train them into the best. Unless you're good team in which case you should have them flooding into your youth team.

I did not know that they were on youth schedules if playing in the youth team, it sound weird.. Especially considering only players on youth contracts can be assigned to that training.. Must be a glitch. The reason youth training is less effective is probably because they put in less hours training than full time training, also match experience is vital for players to improve, I cannot stress enough how much you need your players to be playing competitive games.

Loaning your players out is fine, just try to make sure it's to a club in a loaded league with good training facilities.

I'm not entirely sure what Junior Coaching is, but I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the quality of your regens. I think it's supposed to be how much training your youth players before they are ready to join your youth squad, if that makes sense.

In conclusion, I've found that first team football is the easiest way to get your players to progress quickly, I've had some high PA regens who lose their way in a short space of time just because I haven't played them much.

 

[Tk1129]

Really? You can have youngster on full-time schedules in the youth team? I thought SI changed that. As soon as I move them to reserves or first team they can be trained on full-time schedules, but not while they're in the youth team. I'm fairly certain it's not a glitch.

And btw I was playing with Roma who have one of the best academies in the game.

 

[King Sid]

Youth development for me in 2012 has been much better than previous years. In my LLM saves I've always struggled to develop youngsters that I've brought in to their full potential. However this year in my save as Dover it's been the other way around.

The club has fairly basic training facilities and adequate youth facilities and the board won't increase them. However I have managed to get the board to agree to increase the Junior Coaching budget numerous times. I've brought in a couple of youngsters in my first season (16years old) and have played them in the first team for the last 6 years. They weren't the best players in my squad but played better than most of the experienced players. Now playing in League 1 these players are rated as being a good player for Premiership teams.

I've also noticed that with the increase in Junior Coaching budget the youth players coming into my team have increased in quality. I think that this does affect the quality of players coming into your team as mine have gone from having the potential to be a good Blue Square player to having the potential to be good Championship players.

 

[Vigotje]

I love the fact that trainers mention when they need time in first team, try to loan them out (i try to loan out all my -19 and reserves i dont need)